Business Blogs (303)

From time-to-time I read or hear an unusual word or phrase from a group of people, often unrelated. This week, it's "Banana Republic!”
Why are so many saying it?
Because Trump said it.
“My great company, and myself, are being attacked from all sides," Trump added. "Banana Republic!”

He's testifying Wednesday (today) in a NY investigation.

Expect trouble.
Two young men wearing ski masks walk into a smoke-shop in Las Vegas (and a 3rd holds the door open) obviously looking to rob the place. They get asked to leave by the owner. One grabs the money in a tip jar and the other jumps over the counter (probably to grab merchandise) when the store owner quickly pounces on him jabbing him several times with (what appears to be) a small dagger. He goes down and the other 2 run away.
(so much for partners in crime)



Stated in the news TV followup, the door will be fitted with a buzzer to restrict entry.

10 years ago I was tipping my hairstylist about 1/3 the price of a haircut.
4 bucks for a 12 dollar cut that usually took her 20 minutes.
I went to her last week and haircuts now are 24 dollars so the tip was $8

Same style haircut, same time to do it, double the price in 10 years.

A month ago, I blogged that Elon Musk would have a back door plan to exit his purchase of Twitter. In today's news, it's reported he will abandon his offer. It's based on the company not providing enough information about the number of fake accounts.

"Twitter immediately fired back, saying it would sue the Tesla CEO to uphold the deal."

The saga lives on...

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"This is President Trump's ONLY Official Birthday Card," Trump Jr. wrote in his email. "So make sure you sign THIS ONE and not the other fake ones out there."

Other fake ones? If I read that correctly, that is a fake one too!


Didn't I say it's all about the money?

Don't take my word for it.



Story link:

Every day there is an article about Elon Musk's $44 Billion bid to buy Twitter.
Did he, didn't he, what are the conditions, is it legal, etc, etc.
This morning I see some reality that a percentage of Twitter accounts are bogus... bots as it robotically controlled. Could Twitter be deceiving some of their numbers?
Maybe he's thinking of a way to back out of a seemingly bad deal.
Hmmm...

Being one of the most popular social networks globally, Instagram has become a marketing hub. If you haven’t yet started leveraging Instagram for marketing, it’s never too late to hop on board.

The platform constantly brings in new changes and update to make it easier for businesses to reach an audience. Before you dive into influencer marketing or finding the best sites to buy Instagram followers , let’s start with the basics. Here is the ultimate guide to getting started with Instagram marketing for your business.
1. Set Up Your Instagram Business ProfileFirst things first, new users must set up their Instagram profile and complete all necessary details. Once you go to setting and ‘switch to business profile’, you can get started by completing your profile.
This means optimizing your profile by adding the necessary details. Insert a display picture that represents your brand, like a logo. Next, add details like your contact, address, and website. And lastly, don’t forget to add a bio defining your business in a couple of lines.
2. Define Objectives And Target AudienceBefore you start bombarding your profile with random Instagram posts, define your objectives. To make the most out of Instagram in the long run, you must define your goals. This can help you allocate your budget, resources, and time accordingly. Your objective may be to drive sales, showcase a work portfolio or build a loyal fan base, or any other goal. Defining the objectives also helps in determining your target audience which helps in meaningful content creation.
3. Curate A Content CalendarContent lies at the heart of every Instagram marketing strategy. Millions of posts are sent out every day, and your content must stand out to gain traction. Instead of coming up with content spontaneously and irregularly, curate a content calendar. Inculcate a few content pillars and regular posts to stay consistent on social media.
This way, instead of scrambling at the last moment, you can have a clear vision and keep an eye out for opportunities. Make sure that all your content is consistently in sync with your brand persona. It’s also important to pay equal emphasis on the post caption and hashtags.
4. Leverage Paid Instagram AdsBefore you buy Instagram followers or likes to get traction, consider running Instagram ads. Running promotional content is a great way to reach out to your target audience beyond your followers.
Instagram ads offer a range of parameters that can help businesses in generating targeted traffic. Users can also gain a wider reach and increase engagements on Instagram. Users having a big budget can also look for the best sites to buy Instagram followers in order to increase engagement.
5. Explore Instagram InsightsInstagram Analytics provides businesses with detailed insights for performance analysis. Through these insights, businesses can find relevant information like reach, impressions, leads, peak hours, and much more. Tracking performance can help marketers in deciphering what’s working and what’s not working.
This information can help businesses in finding out their weaknesses and strengths. Accordingly, marketers can optimize and improve their marketing and content strategy. Several social media marketing tools help users track engagements, calculate ROI, buy Instagram followers, etc. Insightful tools like Buffer can be used to get deeper insights.
6. Engage With Your AudienceIf you’re starting from scratch, you may have to go the extra mile to convert your followers into fans. This involves interacting with your fans on quite a regular basis. Respond to comments, reply to DM’s, post engaging content, and leverage all Instagram story's interactive features. Another great way to increase engagements without having to buy Instagram followers is by encouraging user-generated content.
7. Do a Competitor AnalysisStudying your competition can help you figure out the ongoing trends in our industry.

Time when TikTok was only an entertaining platform has long gone. A lot of brands have already been using it for so many purposes:

From creating brand awareness with the help of funny or educational content to driving cheap traffic to their websites using paid ads. There are already more than 1 BLN users on TikTok, and it keeps expanding!
The commercial potential of Tiktok as a platform and especially of TiktTok Ads continues to grow. Users there are highly engaged and a huge part of them are, in fact, solvent purchases. Yes, there’re still a lot of kids on TikTok who use it just for fun, but with proper targeting settings and clear messaging, they won’t be spoiling your statistics and clicking through to your website just to window shop.
Big brands use TikTok as a part of their omnichannel strategy and additional tool to raise brand awareness. Also, they share content shot in a specific to the platform entertaining style and attract a younger audience this way. Which means they look at it from the long-term perspective and start nurturing their future customers now.
As for medium and small businesses, they also aim to grow their page’s following, but their key goal is to increase sales with the help of TikTok Ads. For most of them TikTok is just an opening channel that drives cheap traffic to their website, and then retargeting on Facebook and Google does all the rest. What’s especially great about TikTok for small businesses is that it doesn’t require sleek commercials with various sceneries and professional actors. A video recorded with the help of a smartphone, by an ordinary person, somewhere at their home can easily go viral. You don’t need to spend a ton of money to have something scalable. That’s one of the reasons why TikTok ads can get you the most bang for your buck.
But how can you know if you’ll get the most of your marketing dollars even before you launch a test campaign? If you’re in one of the following niches, I’ve got good news for you, they’re super successful on TikTok: beauty and skincare products, unique home tools and appliances, food and drinks, all kinds of apparel, toys. Most likely, the secret to their success is that you can easily demonstrate these goods, show their benefits, and create all sorts of videos with them. Also, they are quite often low-ticket which makes it cheaper to advertise them and easier to persuade users to buy.
The 8 Secrets to Marketing With TikTok
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If you’re from a different niche, don’t rush to quit the idea of being on TikTok. There are still so many ways you can make your content go viral and your ads super profitable. But first of all, let’s find out how you can make TikTok work for you organically.
If your rivals or at least some of them have already become popular on this platform, check what they post on their profiles. Of course, do not copy their style and ideas, but analyze the key trends they lean toward and try to understand what’s made their subscribers press that “follow” button. Get inspired by their content and generate ideas that will share your brand’s vision as one of the key ideas is also to differentiate yourself from your rivals.
Another source of inspiration is TikTok Trends. There you can find the most popular videos, hashtags, sounds, or challenges. If you see something that may be interesting and relevant to your audience, do a similar thing but with your products and in your own brand’s style.
Whether you are getting inspired by someone else or having a unique approach, you should remember that it is crucially important to stay consistent on TikTok. You should post something every day to stay in touch with your following. Also, even when you think you’ve found the goldmine after one of your videos blew up, don’t stop testing. Try different types of content all the time to find at least 5 of them that do work, and then you can probably focus on those types but ke

I was going to add a comment to my 'arrogant' blog but this story deserves a blog of it's own.

About 6 years ago, I did a job with a client who is the top of the list of a-holes.
He described to the salesman everything he wanted for his new kitchen.
Let's say it was $100,000 and he didn't to pay that much.
He told the salesman his budget was $50,000.

Okay, the salesman told him to get to that price, substitutions and value-engineered design changes would have to take place. For example, select cherry was no longer being used. Sequenced grain match to the doors and drawer fronts wouldn't be done either. He agreed to those terms. We went to contract and drawings with specifications was prepared. He picked apart every facet of the details and disputed what he was getting. For example he insisted on select, sequenced grain and the stain & glaze finish to the back side of the doors to be equal to the face.
Again, the salesman brought up his budget. If he wanted select and matching grain the price would be different and he would have to sign a change order. He declined and we proceeded to fabricate.
The job had delays in the flooring. He rejected the materials and installation and the floor contractor had to do the floor again.

We delivered and installed. I inspected the work and it was excellent. It was the kind of project someone would put into their portfolio. The complaints started. Mis-matched grain, stain color unacceptable, cabinets not installed level, seams on the crown moulding were visible. The list was several pages. I hadn't been on the project in a week... it was beautiful, what could have gone wrong?

The installer said "Man, you won't believe what they did with blue tape"

Normally, clients and contractors use small pieces of blue tape to make a few spots that needed touchup or in a bad case a damaged door that needed to be replaced. It's expected to see 3, 4 maybe 5 pieces of tape.

I walked in and a 'blue tape blizzard' of easily 50 spots marked unacceptable.

The client backed up his story with a letter from his attorney and a statement from the General Contractor that it was the worst job he has ever seen. Remove all the doors and mouldings and replace them or he would sue. We did and he rejected them again. He had a meeting with his attorney and the owner of the company I was working for.

They agreed the client would pay the difference from regular cherry doors to select grade and we went a third round of door replacements. Weeks had passed and the clock was running out as the client had a deadline to move in or we faced paying his rent on the apartment we was staying at during the construction.

They never asked for my opinion, I was told order the select doors. I did and again he rejected half of the doors. I stopped and told the owner 'This guy is out for blood. There is nothing we can do to satisfy him' and we should have given him his money back after he rejected the 2nd round of replacements.

It went to court. Despite our multiple attempts to make this right, to my surprise, the judge sided in with the client. They settled for giving him nearly all of his money back.

All that time wasted trying to appease the client was stealing valuable materials and factory time we could have been working on profitable jobs.


This week, I dropped off samples to the same design firm I did that project with.
The office manager remembered me and the company I was working for at the time.
We agreed the client was an a-hole and the design firm actually did another project with him.
No different, the manager said. I'm told he rejected more than half of the work in his house and ended up suing many of the sub-contractors.

In my business I often come in contact with people who are extremely wealthy. Sometimes it's not direct, as in the case of a client who hires a designer and I only deal with the designer (or design firm) never having a one-on-one experience with the end user. However, it's close enough to know some things about the client, their business, and personality quirks.
Some examples when more direct contact meeting with a client is when they are business first and you cannot get their attention. Usually, they are focused on (cell phone) conversations that interrupt the meeting. Sometimes, it's 40 minutes late to a meeting and they make their 'grand entrance' with important (to them) reasons for the delay while 3 other people are waiting on them to begin.